Beachwood Cottage Quilts: Purple Passion

My favorite colors fall in the teal and aqua ranges, with purples and lavenders dueling it out with pinks for second place. And that ranking is subject to change without even a moments notice. So when this years Quiltville Winter Mystery En Provence came out with purples and lavenders as two of the colors, I just knew I had to play along.

Strange as it may seem, with these being in my very favorites range of colors, I had very little purple and absolutely NO lavender in my fabric stash. There was possibly enough purples to make up the yardage, but I really wasn't wanting to go scrappy with this one. So off to the fabric store with list in hand fabrics needed as well as a swatch of my green, since I did have it. A perfect piece...but more on that when we get to the clue that uses greens. Now, back to the purple and lavenders. Started telling the clerk what was needed and she picked up a piece of scrumptious purple that was end of bolt they had laying on the cutting table. I'm instantly in love with the fabric but it wasn't enough yardage. Remember at this point I'm not doing scrappy and only looking for ONE purple. HOWEVER, I decided that the piece was going home with me anyway. LOL Then we found another gorgeous purple that was just perfect. Ok, it's a go. Now to find a lavender and yellow to play in the group. I have a lot of yellows, but again not enough yardage in any of them and none of them were playing that well with that green. I found one lavender that was PERFECT....not enough left on the bolt. Ugh! So kept on looking. Found another variegated lavender that I really liked, but decided it might be a little too dark for this project and to work with the purple I had pulled so gave up on it. But, seriously thinking next time I'm up that way some of it might have to come home with me if there is any left.

This is the lavender I loved and ended up with.

So, I'm fairly perplexed on finding lavender. Then the clerk and owner did a wonderful thing that all shop owners I hope do for their clients. They found a kit that had that lavender I was in love with in it for backing. She offered to pull it for me and just sell the kit discounted with no backing. How much did I want? YES! Win win for both of us. She makes an on the spot sale, I get what I want, and she can still sell the kit discounted or easily add a different fabric for backing. How much do I want or how much do I NEED. Well, duh...I took the WHOLE thing of course. Happy camper!

The lavender is not showing up very well in the photo. It is slightly darker. The center purple is the one I chose as my main purple and the bottom dark with gold dots is the small remnant that came home with me.

Now since Clue 3 is four patches like in Clue 1, I won't bore you with a lot of repetition on the makings of the units. But after much consideration I decided that the dark fabric needed to be added in to the fray. So I have a constant in the single lavender and now two dark purples.

Got the strips all cut and stitched together to start sub-cutting .

Ok, so here they are all laid out to sew. Again, I made sure the seems were all going up in the right direction in my stacks so they would spin nicely when finished. Makes it easy to just pick them up and pop them under the presser foot and chain away. Goes quite quickly ....unless you run out of bobbin thread and your machine forgets to "beep" at you.... Yeah, fun. Hey, but only about a dozen ran off without thread.
Spun out on the back......